How to tether your MiFi 4620L/LE or JetPack 5510L to Peplink Balance and Pepwave Max/Surf Routers

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Tuesday, 05 February 2013

How to tether your MiFi 4620L/LE or JetPack 5510L to Peplink Balance and Pepwave Max/Surf Routers

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MiFi
devices like the Jetpack 4620L or 4620LE have grown in popularity over
the years by allowing users to share WiFi with multiple devices while
being small and portable with battery power. However, for companies that
want to share connectivity with a lot of users and create a more
advanced office network the MiFi’s simply fall short. Unlike the
original MiFi units (MiFi 2200), the newer Jetpack devices would not
actually tether directly to a router and users were forced to use WiFi as WAN,
which syncs the MiFi to the router via WiFi. Now, Peplink Balance,
Pepwave Max and Pepwave Surf routers fully support both the MiFi 4620L, 4620LE and 5510L
versions via direct USB tether and below you’ll find step by step
instructions on how to set this up.

Step 1 - Enable USB tethering:

Before
you begin making configuration changes on the router you’ll need to
make sure that you MiFi has tethering enabled. If this is not enabled
your Peplink or Pepwave product will not even recognize the MiFi unit
because it hasn’t been provisioned for tethering. If you haven’t enabled
the USB tethering please refer to this article to configure it - Click: Enable USB Tethering on your MiFi 4620LE

Please Note - The Mifi 5510L comes with USB tethering preconfigured so you can skip this step.

Step 2 - Update your Peplink/Pepwave product to 5.4.7/6.0.3 firmware:

Below
you’ll find the latest build of firmware 5.4.7/6.0.3 for your Peplink or
Pepwave unit. Download the corresponding file for your unit and save it
to your hard drive. After downloaded navigate to the admin interface of
your router and click on the “System” tab and select “Firmware” from the
tab on the left hand side. Choose the manual upgrade option, save your
current configuration and flash the router to the latest build of
firmware.

In
order to connect the MiFi to your Peplink/Pepwave router you’ll need to
change the default IP address of the unit. Typically the factory address
is either http://192.168.50.1 (Pepwave Max/Surf SOHO), http://192.168.1.1 (Peplink Balance), or http://192.168.20.1 (Pepwave Surf On the Go) and both the username/password are “admin” by default. After logged into the router please follow these steps*:

Click on “Network” and select “Basic Settings”

Under “IP Settings” change the routers IP to 10.0.0.1 or something similar - The router can not use a (192.) IP range.

Under
“DHCP server settings” change the IP range to something like (10.0.0.10
- 10.0.0.254). We recommend starting the DHCP range at (.10) to avoid
IP conflicts with the 4620L or 5510L

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click save

After saving the settings scroll to the top of the page and click “Apply Changes” on the upper right side of the screen

Plug the MiFi into your Peplink Balance or Pepwave Max/Surf router and it will connect to your router. Please note -
If you haven’t setup a USB device on the Peplink Balance routers first
you may need to configure the USB device through the Setup Wizard before
it will connect

*The Surf On the Go instructions slightly differ. If you need assistance, and you purchased your Surf from 3Gstore.com, contact our support department (866-347-8673 ext. 3)

Conclusion:

After
following the steps above you can now enjoy using your MiFi 4620L or
MiFi 5510L in your new Peplink Balance or Pepwave Max/Surf router. The MiFi
units can either be used as a stand alone device to fuel your entire
network if you don’t have access to Cable/DSL, load balance with
multiple WAN links or provide a redundant backup connection if your main
link goes down. Included with 5.4.7 firmware you also have the ability
to configure push notifications
to your iOS or Android devices to know the exact status of your router
when you’re not at the office. MiFi tethering is gaining a ton of
popularity with Peplink and Pepwave routers because it allows you to
provide a backup Internet connection at the office and still enjoy your
portable hotspot when you leave the office.